VOLUNTEERING

Amy
Hsu came by our house in her car to pick up a tall bookcase. She had seen my post on the popular
Northwest Philly Freecycle website, where people give and get things –for free!

I had trash-picked the sturdy bookcase
just a couple days before but then realized I could not use it as planned. Hsu says her husband may use it
for his beer brewing containers and supplies. Hsu is an enthusiast of the free online exchange. Through
notices on the website she recently gave away a couch and a chair and dug up a
plant from an offeror’s yard. She likes when she gets “repeats” like the woman
who had given her cinderblocks who, thinking of her grandkids, responded to Hsu's
offer of stuffed animals.

NW
Philly Freecycle, a moderated website, was launched in 2004 by Meenal Raval and
the Mount Airy Greening Network (MAGNET) as an offshoot of the citywide Philly Freecycle.
It boasts over 5000 members and in April alone hosted 610 posts, a combination
of “Offer”, “Wanted”, “Taken” and “Curb Alerts” for all kinds of household items
imaginable.

During
a break from cultivating and weeding a raised bed of peas at the Weavers Way
Henry Got Crops farm in Roxborough where he volunteers, your correspondent
captured a slice of life on the farm.

The
farm grows crops mainly for the 120 members of the CSA (“Community Supported
Agriculture” organization) but also regularly sells product through the Weavers
Way stores in Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill, at an onsite farm stand and
downtown at Head House Square.

When
I arrived, CSA Manager Nina Berryman was busily sketching out the day’s plan on
a chalkboard in the farm shed. I followed Berryman around as she lamented some
stunted carrots with experienced worker Minna Latortue, who had just graduated nursing
school, examined the cold season greens in the hoop houses, made plans with
Laura Mass Forsberg to plant potatoes later in the day then getting her started
on a weeding task and finally doing what she calls the hardest part of the job,
doing deskwork at a laptop computer communicating with CSA members and such.

I
caught up with farm educator Tara Campbell as she waited for the first of four
school groups to arrive and watched as she and educator Clare Hyre prepped
students from Saul Agricultural High School (where the farm is located) and got
them out working down the field.

And
ebullient compost guy Scott Blunk showed off the composting operation as he
directed a frontend loader to dump just-arrived vegetable waste into the ten
thousand pound capacity grinder and activated it massive rotating tines. See small video of Blunk here

Your
correspondent shot some footage of cows grazing peacefully but did not include
it in the accompanying video because the dairy operation belongs to the Saul School
and not Henry Got Crops. Your correspondent also looks forward to comparing
notes and photos with Lanie Blackmer who later arrived to do a story for
WHYY/Newsworks.

Hillary
Rettig had been reading and thinking about donating a kidney for a few years.
Why not, she thought, if she had two working ones and one to spare and could
save someone’s life? When she reached a tipping point, she went ahead with the
laparoscopic surgery. As a vegetarian and animal lover, she was thrilled to
find a match in a man who had founded a no-kill animal shelter. On a
matchmaking website, among the many heart-braking posts of people pleading for
a donated kidney, the man had written, “ I have spent the last twenty years
giving animals a second chance at life; won’t you consider giving me a second
chance?” Afterwards, the donee’s wife told Retting that Rettig had saved not
just her husband, but their family as well. Rettig recommends donating a kidney to everyone. “ It’s a
wonderful, wonderful feeling… If I had a few extra kidneys, I would donate them
all.” Watch video interview here. Read Rettig's account of her donation here.

Through the initiative of one of its members, the Weavers Way Cooperative Association in Mount Airy, Philadelphia mounted a clothing and supplies drive for the victims of Hurricane Sandy which hit New York and the New Jersey coast hard. According to membership coordinator Beau Bibeau, a Weavers Way truck would be packed with the donations that volunteers were just them busily sorting and boxing. Staff would drive the goods early the next morning to a distribution center up in Manahawkin, New Jersey. C.J. Reinhard, who grew up in a Jersey area where 50 homes were destroyed by the hurricane, was busily finishing up stitches on a colorful blanket she was specifically crocheting for some hurricane victim, she wouldn't know who, to keep warm and know people cared and were thinking of them. Watch video here.

Jo Quasney is a survivor of Hurricane Katrina. Of French Creole heritage, Quasney is a native of New Orleans who was living alone in her house in the eighth ward when the hurricane struck on August 29, 2005. Quasney bred birds and had no way of transporting or finding shelter for the birds when New Orleans residents were advised to evacuate so she stuck it out. Her neighborhood began to flood after she heard an explosion that she attributes to a Halliburton company oil barge breaking through a levee. (For a discussion on the cause of the breech, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ING_4727)

Raven Team members from the National Civilian Community Corps (AmeriCorps) based in Maryland plant sugar maples and other trees to restore the understory in Carpenters Woods Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. The effort is in conjunction with PhillyRising Collaborative and Philadelphia Parks and Recreation. These college age youth college, from high school to college grads, spend ten months traveling to four different sites in the Northeastern U.S. working on projects as diverse as cleaning up back alleys in North Philadelphia's Swampoodle section to weatherizing old homes in Maine. Above: High school grad Sam, planting a tree. Watch video here.

Gregory Marincola volunteers at Ryerss Farm, a “retirement” community for old and formerly abused horses, located on nearly 400 acres of land in Chester County. http://www.ryerss.com There, Marincola visits with the first horse of his wife, now deceased, a half Tennessee Walker, half Paint who was called to Ryerss from her place on the waiting list when she was 31 years old.

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I’d like to introduce you to my three horses that I have up here at Ryerss. I’ll show you a picture. [Pointing to photos on wall] This is my wife, Andrea, who has passed away, and this is our horse, “April,” when she was a baby. She’s like two years old there. And to the right we have Vicki, who has passed away, and our little pony Mindy, who has also moved to the other side. And, again, this is April, a bit older now; she’s still living, she’s still with me. This is their wall of fame here at Ryerss and you can see it’s all the horses that are here now, who have been through here and passed on and some of their owners. This is open to the public. They can come in here and look at the horses and get an idea what’s going on….This is Arian’s April’s Dawn, my wife’s first horse and we got her when she was two years old. We kept her at home until she reached the age of thirty-one. DID YOUR WIFE RIDE HER? Yeah… She’s strictly a pleasure horse and she’s half Tennessee Walker and a half Paint. We had put our horses on a waiting list here at Ryerss and a year after my wife passed away, I got the letter, it was time for them to come home. So this is where she lives now. Gregory Marincola, with April, at Ryerss Farm for Aged Equines, South Coventry Township, Chester County, Pa.

I am the only child or Roscoe and Virginia Pauline Warner… HOW DID YOU GET INTO PHYSICAL THERAPY? Football injury in high school. Then I went to Shepherd University played four years as starting center at Shepherd. So if I messed up, everybody knew it and the play was toast. ARE YOU STILL ACTIVE ATHLETICALLY OR SPORTS-WISE? Keystone Senior Games. I did ten events. Shot-put, discus, hammer throw, foul shooting, badminton, tennis, swimming…. March first I will be seven decades. But I was getting all ready last summer and I just didn’t feel right. And in February my intestines blew. And so I went from playing tennis to emergency surgery. Eight days of induced coma. During the coma (I’m sure it was sometime there) I went, ‘God, are you sure you got the right guy?’ And he didn’t answer. And then he came back in and He says, ‘George, I will take you home some day but I got some things for you to do.’ ‘God, please tell me it’s a long list.’ During that time I felt no fear, anxiety and it’s true. I think they did shift work between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit- you know, around the clock. And the surgeons told my wife, ‘There’s no way he’s going to survive this’ because I had pneumonia, peritonitis …and it wasn’t to be my time. So since that time I teach a class once a week- balance, flexibility, isometrics, tai chi and shenanigans. And I do it for free. CAN YOU SHOW US A SHENANIGAN? Do you want my wife to really do me in? [To his wife] Young lady, do you know what a shenanigan is? George Warner of Hershey, PA spending New Year’s in Carlisle, PA.

HOW CAN WE HELP [YOU,] THE POLICE, DO YOUR JOB? The way citizens can help out the police department- we're supposed to work in partnership with each other. I would suggest that the best way is just to be visible. First, call us, 911, if you see anything that is suspicious or out of hand and the police can come and investigate it. But also, as a community, there's more that you guys have to take on your block. So it would be better to get organized and work with the police. You guys are out there every day, you're coming home from work, from school and play. You can just form up, you can have meetings on the corners that you identify as problem corners and inform us that you're doing it. Take charge of your block.

HOW DO THE PSA'S WORK?

The PSAs are police service areas and we've been up and running with the PSAs for at least two years already. Basically, we can identify problem areas, we can bring in specialists such as L&I, Abandoned Autos, on the specific problems you're having in the neighborhood.

I NOTICED A YOUTUBE CHANNEL WHERE YOU HAVE VIDEOS,MAYBE SURVEILLANCE CAMERA? DO YOU KNOW IF THEY'RE EVER HELPFUL IN APPREHENDING ANYONE? With the technology these days, everything is helpful. If it's verbal, by telephone, or if it's video the detectives or police can definitely use it.

Philadelphia Police Seargent Michael Kennedy with daughter Lori after a Town Watch Meeting he helped lead at the 14th police district headquarters on Haines Street in Germanown, Philadelphia.

"So they don't keep keep running over and don't keep dying out. Because they're so small it takes them a while and they keep on getting run over by cars" Volunteer boy.

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"This week is the peak week for the toadlets to be migrating back to the woods. The toads are coming from the reservoir. That's where they were born a few months ago. The adults mated in the reservoir and this is the product of their experience. This is what would be called a reverse migration. The adults left [the reservoir] after they were done mating. And these are the babies migrating from the reservoir to the woods.The detour is set up each night from 7 to 9 pm. We have a permit for about a month." WHAT GROUP IS DOING THIS? "The toad detour. Last night we counted two thousand toadlets and there were also a few thousand that we didn't count They were all over the street. So you have to be very careful where you step." Lisa Levinson, Toad Detour, on Port Royal Avenue and Hagys Mill Road in Roxborough, Phladelphia, near old Philadelphia Water Department reservoir. Levinson is a co-founder and the director of Public Eye: Artists for Animals, "teaching compassion for animals through the arts." Watch video here.